After unspeakable
violence, pacifism is a way to healing

I have had numerous phone calls and
conversations with reporters, and people from all walks of life in
the last 10 days who ask me how Quakers and others can maintain the
tradition of pacifism in the face of the vicious and evil terrorist
acts of Sept. 11.

"Yes," these people say, "we know Jesus said to 'love your
enemies.' But confronted by an enemy who holds no regard for human
life, who will use any means to make his point, and who seems to
be driven by rigid ideology, how can we think a response with
anything other than force will be effective?"

How have I responded? At every opportunity I have said that I
have never seen a time at which Jesus' teachings about peacemaking
and reconciliation make more practical sense than they do now. The
moral insight of Jesus' teachings and the practical wisdom needed
to make the world better now, instead of worse, line up squarely
in this context. This is true for at least three reasons.

First, no amount of force will intimidate an enemy who has
no regard for human life, including his own. One of the reasons
our security measures have not worked very well against these
terrorists is that most of those measures assume the perpetrators
of a crime want to survive it. Yet these perpetrators don't care.

Killing some of these people (and we will never get them all)
with military action will only create more of them. Why? Because
it only makes martyrs for the cause - and martyrdom is something
to which many of these people aspire. Which leads to a second key
point.

We may describe the acts of Sept. 11 as "senseless" or
"crazy acts of violence," but they made sense in the worldview of
those who perpetrated them. They made sense to them because these
people see the United States - and the economic and cultural
powers of the West - as forces of violence, oppression and
injustice. We see ourselves as offering ways out of poverty and
alternatives to traditionally oppressive views in some cultures by
many of our economic and cultural engagements with the wider
world. They see us as "the great Satan" destroying their culture,
disrespectful of their religion and willing to do whatever is
necessary to sustain our opulent, materialistic lifestyle by
exploiting them.

So what will we do? If we go bombing villages in Afghanistan, or
assassinating people in foreign countries, we will look like the
Great Satan. Terrorists use the myths about our evil intent to
justify their actions and recruit young people to their cause. We
can act in ways that reinforce the myth or in ways that show the
myth to be false. If we take actions that result in the death of
innocent civilians, we do the former. And we make ourselves look
like the terrorists whose tactics we decry. If we try to bring the
terrorists to justice through the legitimate channels of
international law and diplomacy, we begin to show we do respect
other nations, religions and cultures, and we undercut the
terrorists' rationale for their actions.

Finally, the record of history shows us that, without fail,
violence begets violence. What has been happening for the last
year in the Mideast makes that clear again, as do many other
conflicts playing out across the world. To break the cycle of this
madness requires some people with the moral courage and practical
wisdom to stand up and say, "No more." Mahatma Gandhi told us,
"There is no way to peace; peace is the way."

The United States can be a great nation now by recognizing
that the ideals upheld in its religious and moral heritage can
make good policy. We can seek the prosecution of the terrorists
through appropriate international channels and institutions. In
seeking justice, we can choose actions that show we do respect the
sovereignty, cultures and values of other peoples and nations. And
most important, we can commit ourselves as a nation to helping
resolve conflicts around the world that feed the conditions that
breed terrorism. If we want a better world, where what happened on
Sept. 11 will not happen again, peacemaking has never made more
sense than it does now.

Thomas H. Jeavons is general
secretary of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious
Society of Friends.

Letter to the Editor by Ted Goertzel, an abridged version of
which was published by the Inquirer:

Dear editor,

As General Secretary of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Thomas
Jeavons (op-ed September 25) may be taken to speak for Quakers as
a group. But not all of us share his views. I, for
one, cannot agree with his statement that, "the record of history
shows us that, without fail, violence begets violence."
History is not that simple. The tremendous (and sometimes
excessive) violence used against Germany and Japan in World War
II, for example, begat decades of peaceful, friendly relationships
with those two nations. Many Quakers fought in that war, and
are still members in good standing. If Jeavons believes they
were wrong, he needs to state his case. Similarly, if he
believes that the African National Congress was wrong to resist
apartheid violently, after Gandhi's nonviolent resistance failed,
he needs to state his case.

Jeavons urges the United States to pursue legal means against
Osama Bin Laden, yet our efforts to do so after the embassy
bombings in Africa have proved useless. There is no
mechanism to enforce these legal means, nor could they be enforced
nonviolently against the Taliban. Nor is there any reason to
believe that nonviolent persuasion could dissuade terrorists
intent on committing mass suicide with a plane. In the World
Trade Center bombings, our security measures failed because
airline personnel were disarmed and trained to negotiate
nonviolently with hijackers. Armed pilots or sky marshals
might have stopped them, saving many more lives than they would
have taken.

The Quaker poet and economist Kenneth Boulding wrote: "Know
this, though love is weak and hate is strong, Yet hate is short,
and love is very long." Quakerism is based on faith that in
the long term love will somehow win over hatred. There may
be a role for a small sect that keeps that hope alive even when it
seems illogical. But if Quakers want to offer policy advice
to society at large, we must deal with harsh realities that
Jeavons ignores.

In the current wartime
environment, and especially in light of the
perceived threats of terrorism against "civilians," many Friends
in the US and
elsewhere are thinking and rethinking the meaning of the Friends
Peace
Testimony. Some of the questions being asked are:

How "pacifist" were
early Friends, really?
What are the limits, if
any, to the pacifism of the famous 1661
declaration?
Is there a valid
distinction between "police actions" and military
force, from the Quaker perspective? If so, how is the
distinction determined?
What is the proper
place for punishment and revenge in situations such
as we now face?
Does pacifism
have any meaning in the face of violence against the
innocent and defenseless?

Already, one Friend with a high public
profile, Scott Simon of National
Public Radio, has gone on record as abandoning his understanding
of pacifism
in the face of recent violence. Others may feel similarly,
but many Friends
still are resolved to hold to a strong pacifist commitment.

To assist in further
exploration of these and related issues, I have
set up The Quaker Peace Page, a webpage, at:

Here you will find excerpts
from various Quaker statements on peace and
pacifism, old and new, plus links to numerous related articles
(including
Scott Simon's statement), all also on the web. I expect to add to
the page as
additional resources become available.

I hope Friends and
others will find this page and its links of use in
sorting out these difficult issues for themselves.

I happen to be a Quaker; this is known, I have written about
this, especially in my memoir, HOME AND AWAY, which, if you would
please permit a small parochial note here, is now available in
paperback. I covered conflicts in Central America and the
Caribbean, the Middle East and Africa. None of them shook my
belief that pacifism offers the world a way to foment change
without the violence that has pained and poisoned our
history. Gandhi and Nehru's non-violent revolution gave
India a skilled and sturdy democracy, rather than another violent
religious tyranny. Nelson Mandela's willingness to employ
deliberate and peaceful protest against the brutalities of
apartheid made today's South Africa an inspiration to the world of
the power of reconciliation and hope. Martin Luther King's
campaign to bring down American segregation; Corazon Aquino's
People Power revolution in the Philippines_pacifism has had its
heroes, its martyrs, its losses, and its victories.

My pacifism was not absolute. About half the draft age Quakers
and Mennonites in North America enlisted during World War II, on
the idea that whatever solutions non-violence had to offer the
world, it was without a response to Adolph Hitler. I hope I would
have been among those who enlisted.

And then, in the 1990's, I covered the Balkans. And I had to
confront, in flesh and blood, the real life flaw_I am inclined to
say literally fatal flaw_of pacifism: all the best people could be
killed by all the worst ones. Bosnia, we might remind ourselves,
had the ambition of being the Costa Rica of the Balkans, an
unarmed democracy that would shine out to the world. Its
surrounding adversaries were not impressed or deterred by this
aspiration.

Slobodan Milosovic will now stand trial before the world_but only
after a quarter of a million people in Bosnia and Kosovo have been
killed. Forgive me if I do not count his delivery for trial as a
victory for international law; and therefore a model to now be
emulated. In fact, I am appalled by the fact that much of the
evidence presented against him at trial will almost undoubtedly be
derived from U.S. intelligence information. That evidence will be
used to try to convict Slobodan Milosovic after he has committed
murder _ because America lacked the will to use its military might
to prevent those killings. I doubt that future despots will be
much deterred by this example.

So I speak as a Quaker of not particularly good standing. I am
still willing to give first consideration to peaceful
alternatives. But I am not willing to lose lives for the sake of
ideological consistency. As Mahatma Gandhi himself once said_and,
like Lincoln, the Mahatma is wonderful for providing quotations
that permit you to prove almost any point you choose_"I would
rather be inconsistent than wrong."

It seems to me that in confronting the forces that attacked the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States has no sane
alternative but to wage war; and wage it with unflinching
resolution.

Notice I don't say reprisal or revenge. What I mean is
self-defense_protecting the United States from further attack by
destroying those who would launch them.

There is a certain quarter of opinion in the United States_we
certainly hear from them at NPR_who, perhaps still in shock, seem
to believe that the attacks against New York and Washington were
natural disasters: horrible, spontaneous whirlwinds that struck
once, and will not reoccur.

This is wrong. It is even inexcusably foolish. The United States
has been targeted for destruction. We know now that more
hijackings were likely planned for September 11th. Other agents
were at least exploring the possibilities of other kinds of
attacks, including sending crop-dusters over cities with poisonous
chemicals. If you dismissed these kinds of scenarios as Hollywood
folderol before, it is just not informed to do so now. There is an
ongoing violent campaign aimed at bringing down the United States.
How many more skyscrapers and national monuments_and the people in
them_how many more citizens are we willing to lose?

There are some quarters of world opinion who believe that simply
delivering those who plotted the attack to international justice
should suffice. But this is not the nature of the danger we
confront_literally, physically, in this very city_which is
present, persistent and current. Simply arresting those who
executed the attacks in New York and Washington will not deter
other assaults that we must assume are proceeding right now.

There are some quarters of opinion who say, just this bluntly,
that Americans somehow invited this attack down upon
ourselves_that this attack was some kind of recompense for holding
slaves a century and a half ago, for extinguishing native tribes
from America, for interning Japanese-Americans during a world war
sixty years ago, for overthrowing Salvador Allende in Chile, or
for standing by Israel, however the Mossad behaves.

None of those individual assertions are untrue. All of them
irrelevant.

The people who make these arguments usually consider themselves
at the polar opposite of the Reverend Jerry Falwell and the
Reverend Pat Robertson. But are they? They say that those who died
in New York and Washington have only their country to blame for
their deaths. By ignoring the extensive advancement America has
made towards becoming a just society, they make it seem as if sins
that are centuries and decades old can never be overcome by
progress.

Some very fine minds have become so skilled at playing this
parlor game of moral relativism that they make little in American
life seem worthwhile. They insist, in so many ways, that the
United States cannot criticize the Taliban for enslaving women in
the 21st century because some of New York police practiced racial
profiling; that the United States does not have the moral standing
to oppose terrorism because we once supported the Shah of Iran.

This kind of rhetorical exchange can go on endlessly_and it
shouldn't. Sharp and powerful minds should be applied to something
more productive right now.

How would those who now urge reconciliation accomplish that?
Reconcile ourselves to what? Should we surrender Manhattan Island?
Iowa, Utah, or Hollywood? Should we impose a unitary religious
state on these shores, throw American women out of school and
work, and rob all other religious groups of any rights so that we
will have the kind of society that our attackers will accept?
Should we renounce our pledge to make a home for those we turned
away from our shores during the Holocaust and abandon Israel?

To reconcile ourselves in any way with the blind souls who flew
against New York and Washington_and who have other targets within
their sights now_is to hand our own lives over into wickedness.

I'm glad to see reporting now that asks, "Why do they hate us?"
We need to hear the complaints of those who experience U.S.
foreign policy, sometimes at the blunt end. But I would not want
our increasing erudition to distract us from the answer that
applies to those who are now physically attacking the United
States: they hate us because they are psychotics. They should be
taken no more seriously as political theorists than Charles Manson
or Timothy McVeigh.

There are also a number of Americans_and we hear from them_who
suggest that this war should not be fought because a number of
Americans who are Muslims have been the objects of threats and
harassment. Those attacks against Muslims are reprehensible. Every
American of every stripe has the obligation to disown and prevent
them.

I have been impressed by President Bush's determination to make
the rights of Muslim Americans_and American respect for Muslim
nations_an essential part of U.S. policy. This is vastly different
from the actions that were inflicted against Japanese-Americans
during World War II. The difference between the damage that good
liberals of their time, Earl Warren, Franklin Roosevelt, and Hugo
Black, imposed on an ethnic minority in 1941, and what
conservatives of this time, George W. Bush, Rudolph Giuliani, and
John Ashcroft, have specifically avoided doing, radiantly
represents America's ability to improve itself.

Over the past ten years, every time the United States has
committed itself to a military deployment_explicitly in the Gulf
War, then in Somalia, and over the skies of Bosnia and Kosovo_it
has been in the defense of Muslim peoples. At the same time, tens
of thousands of Muslim students and other immigrants have been
accepted into the United States. American Muslims now number close
to six million.

We still suffer the stain of racial and ethnic bigotry. But this
largely peaceful incorporation of Islam into American life should
be a source of pride that is not belittled by the actions of a few
cranks and bigots. Surely we have the means to defeat them, too.

I can conjure a score of reasons why this war should not be
fought. The terrorists who struck are ruthless, and undaunted even
by their own deaths. The war will kill some_perhaps many_of our
own best people; the first attack already has_the firefighters and
police who perished in the World Trade Center. The war will be
lengthy and costly, and it may be impossible to tell when it is
done. There will be no unequivocal surrender. And just when we may
begin to feel a sense of safety returning_another strike may
occur. The war may restrict some of our traditional liberties to
travel, unfettered, across our own nation.

And yet: to back away from this war would be to accept all of
that as permanent. To live the rest of our lives, not just a few
years, with deaths delivered by people dying by terrorist bombs,
chemical attacks, and the successive devices of sharp and ruthless
minds, to live out our futures with our liberties shrinking as our
losses and fears expand.

I do not accept that this war must cost us our best qualities.
American men and women often wreaked terrible punishments on their
adversaries in Germany and Japan, from the fire bombing of Dresden
to the incineration of Hiroshima_and by the way, that kind of
retaliatory brutality is in no way justifiable or necessary in the
conflict at hand now. Those men and women returned to their
families and proceeded to pay their own tax dollars into those
programs that rebuilt the nations they fought so fiercely, and
fermented the civil rights movement at home.

Yes, there was the blight of McCarthyite witch hunts, the
prolonged and pernicious mistake of the war in Vietnam, and CIA
incursions into Nicaragua, Iran, and God-knows where else.

But do we genuinely believe that we would live in a better world
today if the West had used its own flaws and sins as a moral
license to avoid fighting world fascism? Would Martin Luther King
have succeeded in changing our world so palpably if his opponent
had been Adolph Hitler instead of an overstuffed Bull Connor,
opposed by the U.S. Federal government?

None of us are immaculate and innocent past the age of six. But
we cannot avoid making judgements_sometimes harsh ones_for the
rest of our lives. One of those judgements is upon us now.

I think that peace activists can sometimes commit the same error
in judgment as generals: they prepare to fight the last war, not
the next one. The conflict before us now does not involve American
power intruding in places where it has interests, but American
power intervening to save lives where only American power can be
effective.

We are living in a time when we must remind ourselves of the
imperfections of analogies. But let me press ahead with one that
has recently been on my mind.

In 1933, the Oxford Student Union conducted a famous debate over
whether it was moral for Britons to fight for king and country.
The leading objective minds of that university reviewed the many
ways in which British colonialism exploited and oppressed the
world. They cited the ways in which vengeful demands made of
Germany in the wake of the end of World War I had helped encourage
the kind of nationalism that may have kindled the rise of fascism.
They saw no moral difference between western colonialism and world
fascism. The Oxford Union ended that debate with this famous
proclamation: "Resolved, that we will in no circumstances fight
for king and country."

Von Ribbentrop sent back the good news to Germany's new
chancellor, Adolph Hitler: the West will not fight for its own
survival. Its finest minds will justify a silent surrender.

The most intelligent young people of their time could not tell
the difference between the deficiencies of their own nation, in
which liberty and democracy occupied cornerstones, and
dictatorship founded on racism, tyranny, and fear.

But Mahatma Gandhi knew the difference. He spent World War II in
a prison in Poona and sat on his hands and spun cloth, rather than
to raise a hand in revolt against England when it was most
vulnerable. He knew that, in the end, a world which was spun by
German and Japanese Fascism offered no hope to the oppressed of
this planet. And in fact, at the close of World War II, Britain
divested itself of empire: exhausted by its own defense, to be
sure, but also ennobled by defending its own best ideals.

Have thoughtful, moral Americans in the 21st Century become so
exquisitely sensitive to the sins and shortcomings of the United
States, so comfortable with the lack of resolution that moral
relativism promotes, that we do not see the blessing that it has
been put into our hands to protect_an incomparably diverse and
democratic nation?

When George Orwell returned to England after fighting against
Fascism in the Spanish civil war, he felt uneasy over finding his
country so comfortable_so close to Fascism. His country, he said,
with its fat Sunday newspapers and thick orange jam.

"_All sleeping the deep, deep sleep," he wrote, "from which I
sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of
it by the roar of bombs."